Imagine

You are a gay man (I’ve just alienated 95% of my audience). You live in NYC. You meet another man and fall in love. He’s from Columbia. You go through the usual dating motions and decide this is real. This being NYC, you get married because that is now legal.

Oh crap, he’s not a citizen.

New York says you are married, but the feds do not. His visa has expired. Columbia is not one of our favored nations so immigration is tricky.

If he were a she, this would be easy. But he is a he, so it’s not.

He’s about to be deported.

Today happens. DOMA is dead.

This morning our intern, Gabe, ran the 77-page ruling and delivered it the Immigration Court five blocks from our office. It was still warm from the printer.

Can you imagine this? Your husband is about to be deported and a Supreme Court ruling saves the day. We think of these rulings in grand policy terms but sometimes they are very personal.